A case of the self-refuting diplomat

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must be wondering if her current position helps or hurts her long-term presidential prospects. The principle benefit of her position is that she's not personally responsible for anything in particular, so the failures of the Obama administration shouldn't stick to her in the fiture. The principle drawback of her position is that she has to speak publically about the Obama administration's foreign policy, which tends to make her look like an idiot.

Here's an example related to our Administration's Iranian policy. Recently, Hillary Clinton floated a plan for saving the Middle East from a nuclear-armed Iran:

As a security summit in Thailand earlier this week, Clinton raised the possibility of a "defense umbrella" over the Middle East to protect other nations from a nuclear-armed Iran, marking the first time a senior administration official has publicly broached the prospect of the Persian nation succeeding in building a nuclear weapon.

That plan lasted a few days before getting shot down by its own sponsor:

"First, we're going to do everything we can to prevent you from ever getting a nuclear weapon. But your pursuit is futile, because we will never let Iran — nuclear-armed, not nuclear-armed — it is something that we view with great concern, and that's why we're doing everything we can to prevent that from ever happening. ... We believe, as a matter of policy, it is unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons."